Saturday, October 15, 2011

Stitch of the Week: Rosemary

This past week we held a Thread Tasting class. In this class, we give you a goodie bag with samples of five to six types of thread that we carry. All of the threads that Stephen chose were beautiful. With each of the threads, Stephen also gave a stitch lesson.

One of my favorite ribbons we carry is Neon Rays Plus. I wrote a blog all about it back in August.

The stitch Stephen used to show how to incorporate this ribbon into your next project was the Rosemary stitch. This is a beautiful stitch that really catches your eye and can make your piece look special.

This stitch is completed in three parts. For the first part, which you can see in the image above, you will use basketweave to complete each square.

Once you have completed a 3 x 3 group of these squares, you will stitch two straight stitches over three intersections, following the guide above.

Finally, once you have finished stitching the straight stitches, you will complete the stitch by doing a small cross stitch in the middle of each cross, as shown above.

As you can see in the stitched sample at the top of this blog, this stitch looks best when using three different colors for each of the parts. A cotton thread, such as DMC or Hylas, or Mandarine Floss, shown in this past blog post, is perfect for the first part where you use the basketweave stitch. Use Neon Rays + for the second step to make the straight stitches (or "petals" as I like to call them) really pop. For the final step, use a complimentary color of the petal.

This stitch would look great as a border, a pattern on clothing, or used as a square in a stitch sampler. As I've mentioned, this stitch would also look great as a little flower patch.

I hope you give this stitch a try, and feel free to send us a picture of how you incorporate it into your piece!

No comments:

Post a Comment

About Me

Rittenhouse Needlepoint Main Site
Rittenhouse Needlepoint was founded by Russell Palmer and Stephen Janick.
Stephen started needlepointing 4 years ago. They had done lots of traveling and had seen needlepoint shops around the country so they knew what they wanted in a needlepoint store -- something fun and friendly, spacious and open, professional and devoted exclusively to needlepoint. In the fall of 2008 they decided to go for it and Rittenhouse Needlepoint is the result. Hope you can stop by and see the place. In the meanwhile, enjoy the blog!